That song is called "The Crafty Farmer". Dunno if there's an Irish version of it.


Georgian healing songs from the women's choir "Sathanao":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D666D7SQ--Y
(I have their CD, which has very good notes in English about the meaning and function of the songs).


Mantra for the Tibetan goddess Tara - just picked at random as a women's song for a female deity. (If female spirituality ever generated any songs in Ireland, they probably take the form of shanties for nuns to sing while whipping children).


Kulning with Susanne Rosenberg (Rosenberg seems to know more about it than anybody else ever)


Mudcat thread on linen industry songs


This is something I found when looking at early Scottish traditional music transcribed for the recorder. I don't know if this communication has ever been published; I couldn't find it and I don't know of any other workhouse musical folklore. The Peterborough workhouse is fairly well documented but I couldn't date "Madam Marshall", and hence the song.

The Devil's Dozen was originally titled St Catherine; it was first published by the Englishman John Bennett, in his Harpsichord Lessons of around 1700. (Thomson's manuscript also has a copy of the tune, as The Dozen). It became a popular dance tune in both England and Scotland. St Catherine was the patron saint of spinners and there is an old song for the costumed parade of the spinning girls of the Peterborough workhouse that fits the first part of the tune; perhaps it started out as a guild march to which Bennett added the second strain. Since the song seems not to have been published, I'll give it here; it's from the papers of Francis Collinson in the National Library of Scotland, an unsigned sheet not in Collinson's handwriting.

    Here cometh Catherine, as fine as any Queen,
    tweedle, tweedle, tweedle, tweedle-twiny-o,
    with a coach and six horses, a-coming to be seen,
    and a-spinning we will go.

    Some say that she's alive and some that she is dead,
    But here she does appear with a crown on her head.

    Old Madam Marshall she taketh up her pen,
    And then she sits and calls for all her royal men.

    You that want employment, though spinning is but small,
    Don't stand still but go to work for all.

    If you set a spinning you can either work or play,
    But if we set a-spinning we earn a crown a day.

    And if there be some young men, as I suppose there's some,
    We'll hardly let them stand alone upon the cold stone.